Sunday, July 6, 2014

The Vergara decision: The big picture

The Vergara decision is part of a movement to eliminate the teaching
profession.

The other
fronts of this war include the accusation that our schools are failing because
of bad teaching, preferential hiring of Teach for America temps, flipped
classrooms with most teaching done by computers, the elimination of seniority
pay, and evaluation of teachers using test-score gains.

Our unspectacular international test scores
are the result of poverty, not teaching quality: The US has the second highest level
of child poverty among all 34 economically advanced countries (23%, compared to
Finland’s 5%). When researchers control for the effect of poverty, American
scores on international tests are at the top of the world.

There is no evidence that Teach for America teachers
do better, no data supporting flipped classrooms, and no data showing that less
experienced teachers are better. Evaluating teachers using test-score gains is
inaccurate: Different tests produce different ratings, and a teacher’s
ratings often vary from year to year.

Firing teachers based on unreliable measures, eliminating
tenure (really due process), and devaluating experience will reduce the number
of teachers. They will be replaced with unproven technology, a boondoggle for
computer companies but a disaster for students.